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Canadian’s lucky iron fish saves lives in Cambodia

A lucky little fish turns out to be the solution to iron deficiency among women in Cambodia, a problem solved by a University of Guelph researcher.

University of Guelph grad student Chris Charles with the iron fish that poor women in Cambodian villages now put in their cooking pots to help raise the levels of iron in their bodies. (GLENN LOWSON FOR THE TORONTO STAR)

By Louise BrownEducation Reporter

Sat., Nov. 12, 2011

At the heart of this tale is a lucky little fish.

How it became the answer to a dire medical problem deep in the Cambodian jungle is something University of Guelph researcher Christopher Charles swears is no fish tale.

It began three years ago when this science whiz from Milton, who had just graduated from Guelph with a bachelor in biomedical science, took on a gritty little summer research gig in Cambodia. The task was to help local scientists try to persuade village women to place chunks of iron in their cooking pots to get more iron in their diet and lower the risk of anemia. Great in theory, but the women weren’t having it.

It was an enticing challenge in a country where iron deficiency is so rampant, 60 per cent of women face premature labour, hemorrhaging during childbirth and poor brain development among their babies.

A disease of poverty, iron deficiency affects 3.5 billion people in the world. This was frontier research. Chris Charles was hooked — but he was also due to start his master’s back in Guelph.

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Mere weeks before he was to leave, Charles called his academic adviser to pull the plug on his master’s in hormone research. To his credit, his adviser refused to let him quit. Instead, he told Charles he had found his true master’s project.

From his new base in a bamboo hut on stilts, Charles took on the task with two researchers from Research Development International in Cambodia, with funding from the University of Guelph, the International Development Research Centre in Ottawa and the Canadian Institutes of Health Research’s doctoral research award.

“Some nights I wondered what I had got myself into; here I was in a village with no running water, no electricity and no way to use my computer — it was like a (research) baptism by fire,” he recalled.

The people they worked with — “the poorest of the poor” — can’t afford red meat or pricey iron pills, and the women won’t switch to iron cooking pots because they find them heavy and costly. Yet a small chunk of iron could release life-saving iron into the water and food. But what shape would the women be willing to place in their cooking pots?

“We knew some random piece of ugly metal wouldn’t work . . . so we had to come up with an attractive idea,” he said. “It became a challenge in social marketing.”

The research team tried a small circle of iron. The women wouldn’t use it.

They crafted iron shaped like a lotus flower. The women didn’t like that either.

But when Charles’ team came up with a piece of iron shaped like a local river fish believed to be lucky? Bingo. Women were happy to place it in their cooking pots and in the months that followed, the iron levels in the village began to climb.

“We designed it about 3 or 4 inches long, small enough to be stirred easily but large enough to provide up to about 75 per cent of the daily iron requirement,” said Charles. They found a local scrap metal worker who could make them for $1.50 each, and so far they have been reusing the fish roughly three years.

“We’re getting fantastic results; there seems to be a huge decrease in anemia and the village women say they feel good, no dizziness, fewer headaches. The iron fish is incredibly powerful.”

In three years, Charles has discovered an answer to the iron problem that is stunning in its simplicity, is likely to save lives and has earned him a master’s and very nearly his PhD. Along the way the 26-year-old learned the Khmer language, mastered the art of taking a blood sample from someone sitting in a dugout canoe while balancing in a second canoe, and caught dengue fever.

Today, Charles is back at Guelph, crunching numbers, preparing to submit the research for publication and putting final touches on his PhD.

Almost as excited is the adviser he called three years ago: endocrinology professor Alastair Summerlee, who also happens to be president of the university.

Summerlee knew he had taken a chance when he let Charles change academic gears.

“We were flying by the seat of our pants, Chris working in a field placement where he had to learn everything (including Khmer) by trial and error and me worrying about whether or not this was the right decision. Did he have the skills to pull it off?” recalled Summerlee.

“But his results are spectacular. He has presented his findings in Asia, Europe and North America to acclaim, and there is a serious possibility that this simple discovery will have a profound influence on the health status of women in Asia.”

One more lesson Charles learned? That marketing is the flip side of science.

“You can have the best treatment in the world, but if people won’t use it, it won’t matter.”

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